This is the second film in which Gianni Di Gregorio plays a character not unlike himself.

In the first film, The Mid August Lunch (Il Pranzo di Ferragosto), he played a middle-aged man, who is landed with his mother and a clutch of other elderly women for the long weekend of Ferragosto - the traditional feast celebrated halfway through Italian summer.

There he was a bachelor; here Gianni is married, retired on a pension living with his working wife, a student daughter and her daughter’s boyfriend perennially underfoot.

Gianni, or Gia as his family and friends call him, cooks for them all, runs errands, receives endless calls from his mother to attend to this or that. His attempts to win power of attorney over his mother’s house in central Rome are easily outwitted by her (she’s once again played by the remarkable 96-year-old actress Valeria de Franciscis).

Gianni feels taken for granted. He's lost his mojo. His attempts to win it back could be pathetic, but Gianni is such a sympathetic character, and it’s done with such rueful delicacy, I watched with interest.

Di Gregorio's humour hangs on shrewd observation and understatement. As a screenwriter his credits include the much lauded Gomorrah, in an entirely different register as an actor he has some of the wistfulness of Mastroianni, plus an awareness of his own physical limitations. His character is one of the put-upon man, perennially escaping outside for a cigarette as an escape from the demands of others. While The Salt of Life lacks the inspired absurdity of Il Pranzo di Ferragosto, some of the funniest scenes are those between Gia and his daughter’s boyfriend, forever mooching moodily in the kitchen. A true taste of Italian family life and maybe yours and mine as well. It's rated PG, and you could do worse this Christmas.